[536] See Vol. I, page 87, note 4 {133}.
[537] See Vol. I, page 132, note 2 {272}.
[538] See Vol. I, page 118, second note 1 {231}.
[539] The name of Newton is so well known that no note seems necessary. He was born at Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, in 1642, and died at Kensington in 1727.
[540] John Keill (1671-1721), professor of astronomy at Oxford from 1710, is said to have been the first to teach the Newtonian physics by direct experiment, the apparatus being invented by him for the purpose. He wrote on astronomy and physics. His Epistola de legibus virium centripetarum, in the Philosophical Transactions for 1708, accused Leibnitz of having obtained his ideas of the calculus from Newton, thus starting the priority controversy.
[541] Thomas Digges (d. in 1595) wrote An Arithmeticall Militare Treatise, named Stratioticos (1579), and completed A geometrical practise, named Pantometria (1571) that had been begun by his father, Leonard Digges.
[542] John Dee (1527-1608), the most famous astrologer of his day, and something of a mathematician, wrote a preface to Billingsley's translation of Euclid into English (1570).
[543] See Vol. I, page 76, note 3 {112}.
[544] Thomas Harriot (1560-1621) was tutor in mathematics to Sir Walter Raleigh, who sent him to survey Virginia (1585). He was one of the best English algebraists of his time, but his Artis Analyticæ Praxis ad Aequationes Algebraicas resolvendas (1631) did not appear until ten years after his death.
[545] Thomas Lydiat (1572-1626), rector of Alkerton, devoted his life chiefly to the study of chronology, writing upon the subject and taking issue with Scaliger (1601).